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51-458: Seneca the Elder is the first of the gens Annaea of whom there is definite knowledge. During the renaissance his name and his works became confused with his son Lucius Annaeus Seneca . In the early 16th century Raphael of Volterra saw that there must be two different men. He noted that two of the elder Seneca's grandsons were called Marcus and since there was a Roman custom for boys to be given

102-450: A decorative finish too contrived, and word-positioning too effeminate, to be tolerable for a mind preparing itself for such holy and courageous teachings." But there was no denying the distinction in Rome of the school of Arellius Fuscus, whose pupils included the philosophical writer Fabianus , and the poet Ovid ; thus, even by his severe critic, Arellius was ranked highly. Albucius Silus too

153-578: A gens being admitted to the patriciate prior to the first century BC was when the Claudii were added to the ranks of the patricians after coming to Rome in 504 BC, five years after the establishment of the Republic. Numerous sources describe two classes amongst the patrician gentes, known as the gentes maiores , or major gentes, and the gentes minores , or minor gentes. No definite information has survived concerning which families were numbered amongst

204-471: A gens voluntarily left or were expelled from the patriciate, along with their descendants. In some cases, gentes that must originally have been patrician, or which were so regarded during the early Republic, were later known only by their plebeian descendants. By the first century BC, the practical distinction between the patricians and the plebeians was largely symbolic, with only a few priesthoods and ceremonial offices restricted to patricians. However, such

255-687: A large fragment of the Historiae itself, cited by Lactantius in Institutiones Divinae 7.15.14. The Lactantius fragment is prefatory (introductory) in character and pessimistic in outlook; it likens the history of Rome to the Seven Ages of Man, while comparing Rome's reversion to monarchical rule with the 'second infancy' of senility. Also extant is Seneca's account of the death of Tiberius, cited by Suetonius in Tiberius 73. In 2017

306-419: A limited number of personal names , or praenomina , the selection of which helped to distinguish members of one gens from another. Sometimes different branches of a gens would vary in their names of choice. The most conservative gentes would sometimes limit themselves to three or four praenomina, while others made regular use of six or seven. There were two main reasons for this limited selection: first, it

357-410: A state within a state, governed by its own elders and assemblies, following its own customs, and carrying out its own religious rites. Certain cults were traditionally associated with specific gentes. The gentile assemblies had the responsibility of adoption and guardianship for their members. If a member of a gens died intestate and without immediate family, his property was distributed to the rest of

408-476: Is neither a collection of his own declamations nor fair copies of those delivered by other declaimers; it is an anthology. It provides extracts and analyses of the declamatory art issuing from the rhetorical celebrities of his (younger) days spent in Rome. It is not a theoretical treatise on declamation; Seneca's own input is limited to pen-portraits of the famous declaimers he cites, plus analytical and critical commentary on their work; and of anecdotes remembered from

459-499: Is no evidence, however, that he pursued such a career himself. And he avoided notice of his writing a history of Rome 'From the beginning of the Civil Wars' through his own times, during the regime of Caligula . Instead, by testimony of the son Seneca (from his De Vita Patris ), his father remained all his life a private gentleman. Still, Seneca supported as honourable the political careers of his elder (two) sons, and he spoke for

510-533: The Etruscans , whose language was unrelated. All of these peoples were eventually absorbed into the sphere of Roman culture. The oldest gentes were said to have originated before the foundation of Rome (traditionally 753 BC), and claimed descent from mythological personages as far back as the time of the Trojan War (traditionally ended 1184 BC ). However, the establishment of the gens cannot long predate

561-500: The late Middle Ages , namely the 14th century anecdotes-collection known as the Gesta Romanorum . Each of Seneca's books was introduced by a preface , an approach he compared to that adopted by organizers of gladiatorial shows. Each preface presents pen-portraits of famous declaimers, either as individuals or in pairs. In the tenth preface, Seneca provided a group presentation of declaimers previously overlooked. Following

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612-723: The City was concerned, we must believe him. If the new art originated from schools elsewhere in the Greek-speaking world—which is likely, in view of the remoteness of those declamatory themes from the realities in then-Roman law-courts—Seneca seems to have been unaware of it. He was, however, well acquainted with the activities (in the City) of Greek rhetoricians teaching their art in Greek alongside those who taught it in Latin. Porcius Latro

663-469: The Elder (Seneca) completed the work on which his fame rests today: the Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores . Originally comprising ten books on the subject of fictitious lawsuits (Controversiae) and at least one book on fictitious speeches of persuasion (Suasoriae) , his effort was ostensibly at the request of his sons, and was ostensibly written from memory. The influence of declamation

714-718: The Elder (here Seneca) was a young contemporary of the venerable Roman orator Cicero , whose voice of advocacy he might have sought out were he reared in Italy. Instead, he was confined by wartime conditions to 'within the walls' of his 'own colony', and there, presumably, he received his first schooling from a praeceptor teaching more than two hundred pupils. When Rome became safe after the Civil Wars, Seneca travelled for lengthy stays there. He assiduously attended public declamations by teachers of rhetoric and professional orators—the process in those days by which young men trained for pursuing careers in advocacy and public administration. There

765-555: The Republic, it is not entirely certain which gentes were considered patrician and which plebeian. However, a series of laws promulgated in 451 and 450 BC as the Twelve Tables attempted to codify a rigid distinction between the classes, formally excluding the plebeians from holding any of the major magistracies from that time until the passage of the Lex Licinia Sextia in 367 BC. Another law promulgated as part of

816-485: The Senecas, the orator Junius Gallio , was the only serious rival to Latro among Rome's best declaimers, according to Seneca. His tributes to Latro illustrates how both men inhabited a literary world far distant from Cicero's—one in which delight in neat contrasts and paradoxes had become all-consuming. " [N]o one," wrote Seneca of Latro, "was more in command of his intellect: no one was more indulgent towards it". In

867-399: The adoption of hereditary surnames. The nomen gentilicium , or "gentile name", was its distinguishing feature, for a Roman citizen's nomen indicated his membership in a gens. The nomen could be derived from any number of things, such as the name of an ancestor, a person's occupation, physical appearance, character, or town of origin. Because some of these things were fairly common, it

918-426: The gens as a social structure declined considerably in imperial times , although the gentilicium continued to define the origins and dynasties of the ancient Romans, including the emperors. The word gens is sometimes translated as "race", or "nation", meaning a people descended from a common ancestor (rather than sharing a common physical trait). It can also be translated as "clan", "kin", or "tribe", although

969-468: The gens. The decisions of a gens were theoretically binding on all of its members. However, no public enactment is recorded as having been passed by the assembly of a gens. As a group, the gentes had considerable influence on the development of Roman law and religious practices, but comparatively little influence on the political and constitutional history of Rome. Certain gentes were considered patrician, and others plebeian. According to tradition,

1020-508: The gentes maiores, or even how many there were. However, they almost certainly included the Aemilii , Claudii , Cornelii , Fabii , Manlii , and Valerii . Nor is it certain whether this distinction was of any practical importance, although it has been suggested that the princeps senatus , or speaker of the Senate , was usually chosen from their number. For the first several decades of

1071-609: The gentes whose names they shared, but within a few generations it often became impossible to distinguish their descendants from the original members. In practice this meant that a gens could acquire new members and even new branches, either by design or by accident. Different branches or stirpes of a gens were usually distinguished by their cognomina , additional surnames following the nomen, which could be either personal or hereditary. Some particularly large stirpes themselves became divided into multiple branches, distinguished by additional cognomina. Most gentes regularly employed

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1122-448: The literary chatter of long ago. The declaimers of Augustan and Tiberian Rome professed admiration for Cicero, but their preferred oratorical style was not very Ciceronian; nor was it the theoretical basis of their educational method. The declamation they practised was, Seneca claimed, a new art, born during his lifetime—its characteristic concentration being on a bizarre set of imaginary lawsuits known as controversiae . So far as Rome

1173-435: The name of auditores ("listeners"), which word came gradually into use as synonymous with discipuli ("learners"). His declaiming style was against unreality, and he avoided the fantastical displays of ingenuity which tempted most speakers on unreal themes. He always tried to find some broad simple issue which would give sufficient field for eloquence instead of trying to raise as many questions as possible. But great as

1224-500: The name of their grandfather, Raphael adopted the name of Marcus for the elder Seneca. Until the 20th century this was used as the standard praenomen . However it is now accepted that this naming custom was not rigid, and since in the manuscripts he is referred to as Lucius, many scholars now prefer this praenomen since it would also help explain why their works became so confused. Growing up in Spain of wealth and equestrian rank, Seneca

1275-593: The novelty of speaking in the open air, that he could not proceed until he had induced the judges, through his friend the propraetor of Hither Spain , to remove from the forum into the basilica. Latro died in 4 BC, as we learn from the Chronicon of Eusebius . Many modern writers suppose that Latro was the author of the Declamations of Sallust against Cicero , and of Cicero against Sallust. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from

1326-464: The only extant book of his Suasoriae, Seneca provides sententiae by the declaimers cited, followed by their divisiones ; but there are no colores , which belong exclusively to treatment of judicial rhetoric, and have no place in deliberative oratory. The elder Seneca's authorship of the declamatory anthology Controversiae —generally ascribed to his son during the Middle Ages —was vindicated by

1377-409: The orders over the next two centuries. Certain patrician families regularly opposed the sharing of power with the plebeians, while others favoured it, and some were divided. Many gentes included both patrician and plebeian branches. These may have arisen through adoption or manumission, or when two unrelated families bearing the same nomen became confused. It may also be that individual members of

1428-542: The papyrologist Valeria Piano published a detailed study of P.Herc 1067, a charred papyrus-roll collected from Herculaneum —it was buried by Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. The scroll was first excavated probably in 1782, and partially unrolled in the early nineteenth century. Piano asserts in her study (published in Cronache Ercolanesi , 47, pp. 163–250), on basis of traces of lettering on its final subscriptio , that

1479-409: The patricians were descended from the "city fathers", or patres ; that is, the heads of the family at the time of its foundation by Romulus , the first King of Rome . Other noble families which came to Rome during the time of the kings were also admitted to the patriciate, including several who emigrated from Alba Longa after that city was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius . The last known instance of

1530-460: The point of exhaustion, after which he would restore himself with a holiday in Tuscany of hunting and farming, during which he never touched a book or pen. It was a peculiarity of Latro's that he would seldom, if ever, listen to his students declaim. They were there to listen and learn, to the declamations of Latro himself, or to his ironical comments on his rivals. His students therefore received

1581-446: The prefaces are surveys of the treatments of particular controversia-themes by noted declaimers. These surveys, in keeping with the title of the anthology— Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores —were usually provided in three main sections. The first section was sententiae , or 'ways of thinking', as adopted by various declaimers about their set themes. The second section: divisiones , or outlines of their argumentation; and

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1632-546: The prefaces to his books of Controversiae Seneca identifies rhetoricians who were contemporaries of Latro but with different approaches and skills than his Latronian ideal. He refers specifically to a primum tetradeum , meaning the four most distinguished declaimers he had known, which included Latro, Gallio, Albucius Silus , and Arellius Fuscus . He expresses serious reservations of Arellius' style, for its unevenness, and its descriptive passages ( explicationes ), which Seneca considered "brilliant, but laboured and involved, with

1683-588: The same nomen gentilicium and who claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of gens, sometimes identified by a distinct cognomen , was called a stirps ( pl. : stirpes ). The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italia during the period of the Roman Republic . Much of individuals' social standing depended on the gens to which they belonged. Certain gentes were classified as patrician , others as plebeian ; some had both patrician and plebeian branches. The importance of

1734-415: The study of rhetoric as honourable even as he was fully aware of the dangers inherent in such careers: 'in which the very objectives sought after are to be feared'. And he supported his youngest son, Mela, who remained content with his heritage as an equestrian. In his old age, on basis of his experiences attending the schools and auditoria of the declaimers in the Rome of Augustus and Tiberius , Seneca

1785-520: The tables forbade the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians, but this was repealed after only a few years, by the Lex Canuleia in 445 BC. Despite the formal reconciliation of the orders in 367, the patrician houses, which as time passed represented a smaller and smaller percentage of the Roman populace, continued to hold on to as much power as possible, resulting in frequent conflict between

1836-472: The ten books of the Controversiae —there are declamatory treatments of some 74 judicial themes, with the names of individual rhetoricians, plus Seneca's critical comments—only five: 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, survive in entirety or nearly-so. Information from the missing books is supplied by an epitome written several centuries later for school use. Later, this same tome supplied stories for European literature of

1887-441: The text of the scroll is now essentially unreadable as continuous narrative because, in the process of unrolling, several layers of tightly rolled papyrus remained stuck together and were peeled away from each other unevenly. Gens In ancient Rome , a gens ( / ɡ ɛ n s / or / dʒ ɛ n z / , Latin: [gẽːs] ; pl. : gentes [ˈgɛnteːs] ) was a family consisting of individuals who shared

1938-562: The text was written by one 'L. Annaeus Seneca'. And, from what can be read of the narrative—that is, of historical and political themes relating to the first decades of the Roman Empire —she proposes that it most likely originated in (the elder) Seneca's Historiae . Further, she judges that traces of a book-title following the author's name (in the subscriptio) are more compatible with Seneca's own ' ... ab initio b[ell]orum [civilium] ' than with his declamatory anthology. Unfortunately,

1989-399: The third: colores , or specious interpretations of the actions of their imaginary defendants, with a view to excusing or vilifying them. The books of Controversiae were supplemented by at least one devoted to Suasoriae (exercises in deliberative oratory), in which historical or mythological characters are imagined as deliberating on their options at crucial junctures in their career. In

2040-568: The title as a mark of distinction granted to individuals, rather than a class to which an entire family belonged. Porcius Latro Marcus Porcius Latro (died 4 BC) was a celebrated Roman rhetorician who is considered one of the founders of scholastic rhetoric. He was born in Roman Spain , and is mentioned often in the works of his friend and contemporary Seneca the Elder , with whom he studied under Marillius. In 17 BC, Latro declaimed before Augustus and Agrippa . His school

2091-551: The word tribus has a separate and distinct meaning in Roman culture. A gens could be as small as a single family, or could include hundreds of individuals. According to tradition, in 479 BC the Fabia gens alone were able to field a militia consisting of three hundred and six men of fighting age. The concept of the gens was not uniquely Roman, but was shared with communities throughout Italy, including those who spoke Italic languages such as Latin , Oscan , and Umbrian as well as

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2142-506: The work of the Renaissance humanists Raffaello Maffei and Justus Lipsius . The elder Seneca (Seneca) was also the author of a lost historical work that recorded a history of Rome from the beginning of the civil wars to (almost) his death, after which it was published by his son. We learn about this magnum opus from the younger Seneca's own work 'De vita patris' (H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum fragmenta , 1883, 292, 301) and from

2193-534: Was a close friend of Seneca—from their childhood together and as classmates at the rhetorical school of Marullus in Cordoba—who later became preeminent among Rome's rhetoricians in the Augustan era. Latro cultivated the sort of "fiery and agitated style" that Seneca particularly admired. He was characterized by the anthologist as a man of both gravity and charm, as eloquent and worthy. Another close family connection of

2244-595: Was because of traditions concerning disgraced or dishonoured members of the gens bearing a particular name. For example, the Junia gens avoided the praenomina Titus and Tiberius after two members with these names were executed for treason. A similar instance supposedly led the assembly of the Manlia gens to forbid its members from bearing the praenomen Marcus , although this prohibition does not seem to have been strictly observed. In theory, each gens functioned as

2295-418: Was influential—as the author of a textbook that Quintilian cited several times. Seneca's declamatory anthology presents a far-reaching critical investigation of the rhetorical basis of the mannerist, so-called 'Silver Age' , literature. Of this age, Ovid's work and the younger Seneca 's sententious disquisitions and dramatic art, and later, Lucan 's fiery epic poetry all stand out as striking examples. Of

2346-469: Was one of the most frequented at Rome, with the poets Ovid and Abronius Silo among its students. Latro is said to have possessed an astonishing memory, and displayed the greatest energy and vehemence, not only in declamation, but also in his studies and other pursuits. He is described as being invariably occupied in speaking, or preparing to speak, and he was considered by some to be the "manliest" of declaimers. He would study constantly and work himself to

2397-454: Was possible for unrelated families to bear the same nomen, and over time to become confused. Persons could be adopted into a gens and acquire its nomen. A libertus , or " freedman ", usually assumed the nomen (and sometimes also the praenomen) of the person who had manumitted him, and a naturalized citizen usually took the name of the patron who granted his citizenship . Freedmen and newly enfranchised citizens were not technically part of

2448-413: Was the reputation of Latro, he did not escape severe criticism on the part of his contemporaries: his language was censured by Messalla , and the arrangement of his orations by other rhetoricians. Though eminent as a rhetorician, he did not excel as a practical orator; and it is related of him that, when he had on one occasion in Spain to plead in the forum the cause of a relation, he felt so embarrassed by

2499-494: Was their prestige that, beginning with the administration of Caesar , and continuing into imperial times, a number of families were raised to the patriciate, replacing older families that had become extinct or faded into obscurity, and which were no longer represented in the Roman senate . By the third century, the distinction between patricians and plebeians had lost its relevance. The emperor Constantine and his successors revived

2550-552: Was traditional to pass down family names from one generation to the next; such names were always preferred. Second, most patrician families limited themselves to a small number of names as a way of distinguishing themselves from the plebeians, who often employed a wider variety of names, including some that were seldom used by the patricians. However, several of the oldest and most noble patrician houses frequently used rare and unusual praenomina. Certain families also deliberately avoided particular praenomina. In at least some cases, this

2601-436: Was widespread in Roman elite culture, both in a didactic role and as a performative genre. Public declamations were attended by such figures as Pliny the Elder , Asinius Pollio , Maecenas , and the emperor Augustus . Seneca mentioned the poet Ovid as being a star declaimer; the works of the satirists Martial and Juvenal and the historian Tacitus reveal substantial declamatory influence. Seneca's work here, however,

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